Around the Grounds
A few quick Saturday thoughts, because I know this is your weekend and I don’t want to clog it up with a long, windy Substack. That’s just who I am . If you are interested in expressing your gratitude by subscribing to Coffey Grounds, I would be so happy to have you. (If you are interested in expressing even deeper gratitude by becoming a paid subscriber to get all the perks that come with it - too long a list for a short post – I would be even happier.)
HAIL YALE
I know you want to know who wrote the Yale fight song, “Bulldog.” It was Mr. Cole Porter, class of 1913. Porter went on to write more than 800 other songs, among them “Anything Goes” and “Night and Day,” but we are talking “Bulldog” today for a very good reason. The Yale men’s basketball team began its NCAA tournament with a shocking victory over Auburn, the No. 7 team in the country. That was delicious in itself, but what made it even better is that when the Yale band couldn’t make it to Spokane, Wash. for the game, the band for the University of Idaho Vandals was happy to fill in. Yale shipped a bunch of blue “Y” tee-shirts to Moscow (not Putin’s Moscow), and Idaho band director Spencer Martin and his students went to work, learning “Bulldog” on the fly, making the 90-minute trip north to Spokane and serenading their second favorite team to victory.
Next up for the Vandals band is Sunday night’s second round matchup, in which No. 13 Yale plays No. 5 San Diego State. I am very much hoping we hear this playing again:
https://bands.yalecollege.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Music/Bulldog.mp3
SANKEY PANKY
Greg Sankey is extremely rich and equally powerful. He makes $3.7 million a year for being the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference (SEC), home to a bunch of the elite college football programs in the country, and on the rise in basketball, too. The presence of such football heavyweights as Georgia and Alabama has helped the SEC make money as fast as the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing can print it, and fueled Sankey’s apparent belief that he knows what is best for the NCAA basketball tournament.
Which he definitely does not.
The magic of March, as every sentient human being knows, is the everpresent possibility of wonder . . . of the unthinkable happening . . . of a school like Yale beating a school like Auburn, or a school like Oakland (Mich.) beating a school like Kentucky, which happened by a score of 80-76 on the opening night of the men’s tournament.
So what does Greg Sankey want to do? He wants to take a hard look at the tournament spots given to champions of all the little non-SEC and non-Big Ten conferences, so more rich, big-name schools can get in and start getting those fat checks from the NCAA.
As Sankey recently told ESPN’s Pete Thamel, “We are giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers (from smaller leagues), and I think that pressure is going to rise as we have more competitive basketball leagues at the top end because of (conference) expansion.”
This is code for, “I want the SEC to get a bigger piece of the pie.”
In another interview, Sankey told The Athletic’s Kyle Tucker that automatic qualifying spots for mid-majors are “part of the review.”
So what he wants to do is rip the egalitarian heart and soul out of the most endearing event of the college sports year, either by leaving out the Oaklands and Yales, and their Cinderella sisters of prior years, St. Peter’s and Fairleigh Dickinson, so the 10th place team in the SEC can get in, or by making the tournament even bigger. Which I think is another terrible idea.
Very few things are perfect, but the NCAA basketball tournaments come as close as just about anything I can think of.
This is a good time to note that Sankey’s conference secured eight bids to the men’s tournament. I guess that’s not enough. In the first six games its teams played, the SEC went 1-5, losing all five of those games to lower seeds.
For an excellent take on what makes March special, check out The Will Leitch Newsletter (williamfleitch.substack.com), and his piece in New York magazine.
Howdy to Audi
When people think about basketball in the state of Iowa, the conversation usually begins and ends with Caitlin Clark, who has unlimited range, an Allstate commercial and the NCAA basketball scoring record. But we need to give a big shoutout to Audi Crooks, the Iowa State freshman who scored 40 points (on 18-of-20 shooting) to help her team erase a 10-point deficit and beat Maryland in the first round of the women’s tournament. The last time a player shot 90 percent or better and scored 40-plus points was 51 years ago, when Bill Walton shot 21-of-22 and scored 44 points to lead UCLA to a rout over Memphis State (thanks to OptaSTATS for that). It’s still the greatest tournament performance I’ve ever seen.
https://images.app.goo.gl/tJ5G7krX7gng2hx49 DesMoines Register